Life is meeting people, making contacts and developing personal relationships. Traditionally the primary tool used to make a contact and to keep track of those people whom one encounters was the business card or an address book. There are a variety of methods and devices in the market to keep track of one's contacts including business card filing systems, business card scanners, rolodexes and numerous database products. However, all of these methods require physical delivery of a business card, a letter or verbal conversation. Recent innovation includes delivering business contact information via e-mail from which a database may be populated.
Business cards and address books are expensive to print, inconvenient to carry and are often forgotten when they may be needed most. Unless one works for a company, most people do not carry business cards. They certainly do not carry them to social or recreational activities. Therefore, it would be useful to have an inexpensive, effortless and omnipresent means to record personal encounters as one proceeds through their day.
Wireless communication devices are popular and ubiquitous devices amongst the general populace and may be used to store contact information. The cost of wireless communication devices has plummeted and functionality has improved exponentially. Most adults and a growing number of children routinely carry a cell phone or other wireless communication device on their person and often manually record contact information that they have obtained from their acquaintances. However, the contact information must first be obtained in the conventional and sometimes awkward manner of asking for it or otherwise being given it and then the user must manually enter the contact information into the device. Thus, conventional wireless communications devices fail to adequately address a user's interest in easily obtaining information about personal encounters.